> As other commenters wrote, you want drivers to always follow the speed limits.
Then you need to set sane limits. A speed limit that 80+% of the people violate isn't a sane limit.
Or, you need to reengineer the road so that you basically can't speed. However, you have to accept that you are going to lose a lot of traffic and, with that, a lot of business.
Creating a 6 lane wide street and then slapping a 20 mph limit on it doesn't make sense.
You can't have sane limits because people don't give a damn about them out of habit, hence you can't really observe the impact of them and adjust accordingly. At this point I believe drivers need to be forced to obey the law by any means necessary in order to create room for traffic engineers to do their job of optimizing limits.
And then you still need to force drivers to obey, because as far as I know, most of them are not able to comprehend that they're not the smartest people around. Just because a limit doesn't make sense to you, desn't mean it's not right and optimal in the overall context of traffic flow in the city.
EDIT: Another thing. Have you ever seen a driver maintaining safe distance? Me neither. It's impossible, because even if you try, you quickly get overtaken by an asshole who knows better. And then we have accidents like the one near me two days ago, when a girl started braking because there was a cat on the road, and she got a whole bunch of people behind her to rear-end one another...
Forcing will not work. If there in anything that the old 55mph limits in the US showed, it's that.
> You can't have sane limits because people don't give a damn about them out of habit
Look, there is science behind this--people drive the speed they feel is safe--they basically don't listen to speed signs. If you want them to drive slower, you have to engineer the road so that they don't feel safe at 45 but do at 35.
> Another thing. Have you ever seen a driver maintaining safe distance? Me neither.
In San Diego? Never. In Pittsburgh? All the time. Guess which one gets frequent enough bad weather to clean the idiots that don't leave following distance off the road?
> Look, there is science behind this--people drive the speed they feel is safe--they basically don't listen to speed signs. If you want them to drive slower, you have to engineer the road so that they don't feel safe at 45 but do at 35.
I've heard that idea before somewhere, and I quite like it. Making the environment seem unsafe on purpose so that people adjust their behaviour. I'm interested if anyone tried that on larger scale somewhere, and what were the results.
Then you need to set sane limits. A speed limit that 80+% of the people violate isn't a sane limit.
Or, you need to reengineer the road so that you basically can't speed. However, you have to accept that you are going to lose a lot of traffic and, with that, a lot of business.
Creating a 6 lane wide street and then slapping a 20 mph limit on it doesn't make sense.